Indy Magnoli's #10 $1 Store Lightsaber Build (pic heavy)

[Indy Magnoli]

Like many of you, I thought I'd place higher than I did (11th place, or three-way tie for 9th place if you're just counting the votes) so I took A LOT of build photos.

So, even if mine didn't rank terribly high, I hope you enjoy this build as much as I did:

I started with these items:

It took me a while to pick out everything for my saber, but the two toy guns had a great round barrel that would become the base of my saber:

Opened up the gun looks like this:

The trigger mechanism has a bunch of little things that I used all over the saber... waste not, want not!

I started with the emitter... which comes from the tip of the gun. The first step was setting the sewing machine bobbin into the gun emitter (I couldn't resist weathering it from the start):

I knew from the beginning I wanted to have lights on my saber and this would turn out to be my biggest challenge since I know very little about electronics. I opened up the wall mounted light to find this:

I removed the switch that was mounted between the bulbs and added some wires in its place:

After cutting off part of the gun barrel and fitting in the light, I arrived at this:

I disassembled the apple corer, purchased mainly for the metal tube that would be the neck of my saber:

As it turns out though, the interior plastic pieces had some nice ribbing, so I used that as well on the body of the saber. After setting the metal tube with a bunch of hot glue:

And the finished emitter, already painted and weathered, waiting for the rest of the saber to be built:

More to come...

Kind regards,
Magnoli

 

[Organic Mechanic]

Tell you what, those "Gun" guns look like prime material for a blaster mod themselves. :cool

 

[Sarednab]

Fantastic Indy!

 

[Indy Magnoli]

Tell you what, those "Gun" guns look like prime material for a blaster mod themselves. :cool

Yeah, I thought the same thing; they're a cool design just on their own.

Back to the build:

The next step was to sort out the rest of the electronics, to make sure everything fit with what I had. So, the bicycle light opened up:

I cut down as much as I could and left just the circuit board. Like the wall light, the switch was built-in, so instead of trying to rewire it, I simply built a button-extension using parts from the inside of one of the guns:

The next thing to sort out was the power. Again, I don't know next to nothing about electronics, so I decided to use the triple AAA housing from the wall light for my power supply. I cut it into several pieces to try and get it to fit into my saber design:

After hot-gluing the pieces together and soldering the battery contacts, I ended up wtih this (which would barely fit into the handle of my lightsaber:

Now that I had the basic electronics sorted out, it was time to see how I could put everything together. Here is the basic layout of the saber:

To be continued...

 

[Indy Magnoli]

I started spray painting pieces as they were cut and trimmed. Here is the emitter with the top half of the saber, showing the sink drain that was dremmelled and sanded to fit:

The bottom half of the saber was a bit of a challenge since the sides of the guns didn't give me a full cylinder, so I had to use four pieces to complete the base of the saber:

Since I don't much about electronics, I didn't want to try and wire everything to one switch, so I decided to leave each light with its own buttons. The little switch that I took off the wall light was so small, it wouldn't work for the saber, so I had to build it up (again using pieces from the innards of one of the guns:

I started putting all the pieces together... and realized that I would need something to cover up the holes left from where the gun barrel was not a complete cylinder (the front sight, etc):

So, I bent open the apple corer and decided to use this to cover up the gaps. The above photo shows my original plan, which has the bottom half of the saber rotated 180 degrees from where it would end up. I ended up lining up the sides of the saber with the "gaps" that would be covered up by the apple corer pieces. The bottom gap would have the bicycle lights showing through another apple corer:

This one was cut for the lights, then the plastic from one of the ball-point pens used to cover the lights.

After final assembly, I painted over the spray painted parts using various acrylic paints, then rubbing the saber with a rough cloth, adding the distressed scratches, etc. I added a little extra patina to a few different parts, though some of it is too subtle to see in these photos.

Here is the finished saber with lights off:

And a few with the lights on:

And one showing the moving lights (there are several settings to change the pulsing speed, etc):

Kind regards,
Indy

 

[Organic Mechanic]

Quality! You put some serious work into this, and what a great result. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Mercury]

Very cool build! The flashing leds are just icing on the cake!:thumbsup

Also, those pistols, were they adult size as far as the grips? If so they could be bases for some cool sci-fi guns.

 

[stromo]

Nice saber, Indy. I really loved the weathering on this one.

 

[Risu]

I didn't follow the contest at all, so this is the first I've seen of it. Amazing work, Indy!

 

[BRRogers]

Aw,... and this was my second choice too!

The hard part about these is you want everyone to win ...

On a non-contest related level this really is a wonderful, unique saber. Sort of feels like a jedi built his saber on Nar-Shaddaa... But I'm particularly impressed with the level of economy here.
In fact, that'd be a really cool custom to see machined

 

[cannibal869]

wow, great use of the bicycle light! Love the sequencing effect - hmm... I might have to "borrow" that idea in a future build...

I also really liked your emitter section - kinda reminded me of the iron man arc reactor.

 

[Indy Magnoli]

On a non-contest related level this really is a wonderful, unique saber. Sort of feels like a jedi built his saber on Nar-Shaddaa...

It's funny you say that because I've always been more of fan of the smugglers & rogues than the jedis. Guess it comes through in my build.

Thanks,
Indy

 

[GeordieIndy]

Really great work Indy!!! I wouldn't have even known where to start with all that stuff...

GeordieIndy

 

[Hogosha]

Even more amazing when you see the build!

 

[Rikarus]

wow! you have a great inner eye! nice ingeuity and layout! for no electronics exp you did awesome too! well done sir!

 

[Indy Magnoli]

Even more amazing when you see the build!

Yeah, that's how I feel about all the builds! Once you see what went into each lightsaber, you really start appreciating the craftsmanship!

Kind regards,
Indy

 

[RedArc]

Cool build you did there ! very creative :thumbsup

congrats

 

[Durrett]

Really nice work on the paint. One of my favorites from the contest.